“Waited till he was sure he wouldn’t get caught before he used it, too,” the marshal said.  “That wire’s soft enough to cut easily.”  He turned to Jimenez.  “You people ought to be glad I’m ineligible for jury duty.  Why don’t you just throw it in and let Kellogg cop a plea?”

* * * * *

Gerd van Riebeek stopped for a moment in the doorway and looked into what had been Leonard Kellogg’s office.  The last time he’d been here, Kellogg had had him on the carpet about that land-prawn business.  Now Ernst Mallin was sitting in Kellogg’s chair, trying to look unconcerned and not making a very good job of it.  Gus Brannhard sprawled in an armchair, smoking a cigar and looking at Mallin as he would look at a river pig when he doubted whether it was worth shooting it or not.  A uniformed deputy turned quickly, then went back to studying an elaborate wall chart showing the interrelation of Zarathustran mammals—­he’d made the original of that chart himself.  And Ruth Ortheris sat apart from the desk and the three men, smoking.  She looked up and then, when she saw that he was looking past and away from her, she lowered her eyes.

“You haven’t found them?” he asked Brannhard.

The fluffy-bearded lawyer shook his head.  “Jack has a gang down in the cellar, working up.  Max is in the psychology lab, putting the Company cops who were on duty last night under veridication.  They all claim, and the veridicator backs them up, that it was impossible for the Fuzzies to get out of the building.”

“They don’t know what’s impossible, for a Fuzzy.”

“That’s what I told him.  He didn’t give me any argument, either.  He’s pretty impressed with how they got out of those cages.”

Ruth spoke.  “Gerd, we didn’t hurt them.  We weren’t going to hurt them at all.  Juan put them in cages because we didn’t have any other place for them, but we were going to fix up a nice room, where they could play together....”  Then she must have seen that he wasn’t listening, and stopped, crushing out her cigarette and rising.  “Dr. Mallin, if these people haven’t any more questions to ask me, I have a lot of work to do.”

“You want to ask her anything, Gerd?” Brannhard inquired.

Once he had had something very important he had wanted to ask her.  He was glad, now, that he hadn’t gotten around to it.  Hell, she was so married to the Company it’d be bigamy if she married him too.

“No, I don’t want to talk to her at all.”

She started for the door, then hesitated.  “Gerd, I....” she began.  Then she went out.  Gus Brannhard looked after her, and dropped the ash of his cigar on Leonard Kellogg’s—­now Ernst Mallin’s—­floor.

* * * * *

Gerd detested her, and she wouldn’t have had any respect for him if he didn’t.  She ought to have known that something like this would happen.  It always did, in the business.  A smart girl, in the business, never got involved with any one man; she always got herself four or five boyfriends, on all possible sides, and played them off one against another.